


The King's Will

by grainjew



Category: One Piece
Genre: Conqueror's Haki (One Piece), Gen, Rusukaina, and conqueror's haki is not a kind power, not all of them even made them in here but a bunch of them did, rayleigh is very cool by the way., this fic is literally just my excuse to tell the fandom about my conqueror's headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23187832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grainjew/pseuds/grainjew
Summary: "Precision," said Rayleigh again, picking up another twig. They really were his best bet for keeping Luffy’s attention. "Direction. Range. Any Conqueror can flatten a battlefield indiscriminately, but only the most practiced can hit a single target from half a mile away.” He pointed at Luffy, then gestured upwards. Luffy followed his hand with his eyes. “The bird was just out of your range, so no matter how much willpower you poured into your attack, it would have been able to recover and flee.""Huh," said Luffy. He frowned. "So I just gotta make the haki pointy?"Lessons in conqueror's haki, on Rusukaina.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy & Silvers Rayleigh
Comments: 43
Kudos: 282





	The King's Will

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fallingwish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingwish/gifts).



> mm i love mentor-student relationships, i love luffy, i love rayleigh, i love conqueror's haki, i love telling people about my conqueror's haki Thoughts... it's really a shock i've only just now written this fic. also i love every single name that people have translated haoshoku into english as and i think this fic uses very nearly all of them because i just couldn't help myself  
> incidentally- very possibly this fic will get a bonus chapter because i have a bunch of short otherwise-unpostable conqueror's ficlets sitting around that i will probably want to attach. so wait for that!
> 
> dedicated, as ever, to my partner in crime connie fallingwish, this time because she has spent years on end listening to me wax poetic about conqueror's haki

Dawn threw colors through the autumn of Rusukaina's branches as Rayleigh shook Luffy awake. Honestly, the boy was so high-maintenance. He ate when he pleased, slept when he was tired, listened only when he was feeling like it, and didn't even bother pretending he cared when he didn't.

"Up," said Rayleigh. "Breakfast, and then we'll be working with your conqueror's haki today."

Breakfast was a wild boar Luffy had practiced armament haki on the afternoon before. Ideally, Rayleigh would have liked to save and smoke some of it, but Luffy's appetite didn't give him a chance. It'd been hard enough getting him to save some for breakfast, and even harder to get his own serving out from under Luffy’s hands. 

The things Rayleigh did for the memory of his captain.

Meat thusly destroyed, Rayleigh led the way to a small clearing far from their campsite. Best to avoid swallowing the cookpot in a fissure or uprooting that tree and all. He was training a Conqueror. Precautions had to be taken.

"So, you said conqueror's haki?" said Luffy. His attention was already wandering. Rayleigh caught him watching a bird. "What 'bout it?"

Rayleigh nailed him in the forehead with an armament-coated twig. "Precision. Try knocking out that bird, if it's got your attention so well."

Luffy didn't even have the grace to look ashamed of himself before his haki exploded out from him, washing over Rayleigh like cold water. That little King, ha. 

Trees snapped like toothpicks around them; the air howled into motion, fleeing; the auras of Rusukaina's animals dimmed to unconsciousness. The bird staggered in the air, dropping, and then picked itself back up and flew away.

"Dammit," said Luffy, panting. He still needed work on his endurance, if he wanted to be using bursts of that force. "Stupid bird."

"Precision," said Rayleigh again, picking up another twig. They really were his best bet for keeping Luffy’s attention. "Direction. Range. Any Conqueror can flatten a battlefield indiscriminately, but only the most practiced can hit a single target from half a mile away.” He pointed at Luffy, then gestured upwards. Luffy followed his hand with his eyes. “The bird was just out of your range, so no matter how much willpower you poured into your attack, it would have been able to recover and flee."

"Huh," said Luffy. He frowned. "So I just gotta make the haki pointy?"

"No?" said Rayleigh. He paused. Thought for a moment. Tried to remember how he'd explained all this to Roger or Shanks, only he’d figured it out _with_ Roger and Shanks had been somewhat more of an abstract thinker than Luffy. Not by much, especially at age twelve, but Luffy was definitely the hardest student Rayleigh’d ever had in regards to conceptuals. 

(Although, again, that was only because Roger hadn’t been his student.)

Well, nothing for it. “Sure, try that.” A squirrel, one of the man-eating kind that populated Rusukaina, shook itself awake in the branches above Rayleigh’s head. “You can see that squirrel, yeah?”

“What squirrel?”

“With your observation haki, Luffy.”

“Oh! Yeah, I can!”

“Hit me with your haki without disturbing it.”

A wash of Luffy’s presence, bright and blinding, and the squirrel keeled over and fell right out of the tree.

“Dammit!”

Rayleigh tossed another twig at him. “Again. Squirrel’s out of commission, so hit the tree and don’t hit me.”

The sun rose as Luffy’s will decimated Rusukaina’s wildlife and took slow steps towards precision. Rayleigh watched him, and gave direction, and — sun searing at his face — reminisced.

He remembered: making sure Shanks knew he wasn’t allowed to try to incapacitate Crocus with conqueror’s haki, even though he hated being confined to the sickbay. He remembered catching Roger at the same thing the very next week, even though Crocus was well enough immune to the King’s Will by then. He remembered sun, he remembered sea, he remembered Rouge’s sunflowers growing tall on deck. He remembered the touch of poneglyphs under his fingers, the taste of his captain’s haki in his mouth. He remembered freedom, and joy, and a wide-open sky. He remembered _Roger._

“Luffy,” he said eventually. Luffy looked up at him, sweat beading his face, eyes bright with resolve. Unless Rayleigh told him otherwise, he wouldn’t stop working for anything less than a meal. It was almost endearing. “Sit for a minute.”

“‘kay,” said Luffy. He dropped where he stood, leaving Rayleigh to walk over. Typical. “Why?”

Rayleigh sat down across from him. Much as it was a gamble on Luffy’s ability to stay focused, some things were best conveyed through words. “I’m your teacher, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, so?” said Luffy. He was picking his nose with a pinky, and Rayleigh couldn’t bring himself to care enough to tell him to stop. “I’d almost got it! See?” He turned his head and flooded his presence over half the clearing, throwing up a cloud of dust and knocking insects out of the air. The force of it ruffled Rayleigh’s cloak, but didn’t quite touch him. “Just need a bit more…” He gestured. “Pointiness.”

“Yes, I see,” said Rayleigh. It _was_ a notable improvement. “But I want to ask you something. There were many Conquerors at Marineford, but only one of them brought their power to bear: you. And that was accidental. Why do you think that is?"

Luffy frowned. Well, at least he was bothering to listen. "Oh, yeah, Hancock said she's also able to use it. Wonder why she didn't..."

"Exactly," said Rayleigh. "And neither did Whitebeard, Doflammingo, Sengoku, or any of the others with the disposition. Those people see the King's Will as a mark of status and a method of intimidation: what they forget is that it’s also a weapon of war."

Luffy tilted his head to the side.

“Applied lightly, your haki is a presence so overwhelming it forces obedience. You’ll find keeping it this light easier on animals, but what you’re doing when you do that, Luffy, is taking your authority and your sovereignty and your certainty, your will and your drive and your dream, and crushing your opponents’ wills with the strength and vastness of it. They’ll do what you say because they’re too terrified to think otherwise.” Luffy was watching a beetle pick itself up from the dead faint he’d forced it into. “Applied more heavily, your presence becomes so overwhelming they can’t stay conscious at all.”

Rayleigh glanced around the clearing and sighed. Broken trees, torn dirt, some kind of massive badger twitching in its nightmares. If he wasn’t careful, the whole island would be a wasteland before even one year was up. His student was a Conqueror _and_ a Monkey D. The destructive potential already inherent in him was quadrupled. Luffy was probably worse on his ship and crew than _Roger_ 'd been _._

Twig, face. Luffy looked up from the beetle he was now dangling from one hand like Rayleigh had been told you were _not_ supposed to hold a child. He was a lost cause in that respect, though, so Rayleigh kept talking. “Applied at full intensity, even the land and the seas will bow to you. It is called the haki of the conquering king because it can lay countries low with the force of the tide, Luffy.” 

Luffy dropped the beetle. On its head. “ _Awesome…_ ”

At least he was listening. Rayleigh smiled, and shut his eyes. “Of course, even lighter than light, it feels, Roger’s haki always felt… Well, when Roger used to hit me with conqueror's haki on accident, back before he learned how to aim, I know all I ever felt was awe.” And sometimes, after a particularly terrifying scrape with death, Roger would throw his presence over the entire ship, soft and light and reassuring like a blanket that said, _I’m still here. I’m still here._ Almost more than anything else, Rayleigh missed that. “Having met your crew I’d guess it’d be the same for them, but most people aren't crew, and ideally you won't be touching your crew with haki at all.”

Rayleigh sighed and stood up back, and nailed Luffy with another armamented twig when he didn’t follow. He wouldn’t be surprised if Luffy’d managed to fall asleep again. Rayleigh just hoped he was as good at subconsciously absorbing words as he was at subconsciously absorbing food.

“Whaat?” whined Luffy. He blinked hopefully at Rayleigh. “Lunchtime?”

“No,” sighed Rayleigh, for the third time in as many minutes. “Lunch is when your aim gets better. Stand back up.”

Luffy bounced back to standing. “Ok! But lunch’ll be soon, cause I’m gonna have perfect aim super fast!”

How to motivate Straw Hat Luffy: food or his crew. Maybe they could eat that badger for lunch, if Luffy improved at the rate he clearly wanted to. 

Well, Rayleigh was getting ahead of himself. He had one more thing to cover before they could get back to practice.

“Before you do that, Luffy,” said Rayleigh. “Always remember that your haki is more than anything else a weapon, and that goes double for the King's Will. Remember what I told you about what it does to people, and then make a choice to use it. Make sense?” 

Luffy stared at him blankly. 

“Here, then, I'll show you."

And without waiting for Luffy to respond, Rayleigh brought his Will to bear. 

The world went silent.

Luffy staggered back three steps and fell to a knee, breathing hard, before he could manage to throw up his own haki in response. Even then, he was trembling, as their clashing wills cut fissures in the air and Rayleigh forced Luffy, steadily, into submission.

Eventually, he let up, braced himself against the deluge of Luffy’s presence that assailed him until Luffy realized the contest was over, and moved to crouch over his student. 

Luffy’s face had hit the dirt. Rayleigh rolled him over onto his back, so that he wouldn’t forget to breathe, and then stared at him. Breath fast, but steadying. Eyes unafraid. He’d done well to stand up even this much to the full force of Rayleigh’s haki, although Rayleigh counted himself weak as conquerors went. He was no captain, no King to rule the seas, just a particularly driven vice-captain whose ambitions had mostly abandoned him in old age. He often wondered what had allowed him to awaken the haki of the Supreme King in the first place.

“Your first time on the receiving end, huh?”

Luffy made a face at him. “You’re heavy,” he said. “Full of stones.”

What did _that_ mean? Luffy was staring at him like he expected an answer, though. 

Rayleigh said, “That’s what it feels like to be overwhelmed by a conqueror’s presence.” He paused, turned Luffy’s sentence around in his mind until it made sense. “This is not a kind ability, or the easy way out of a situation. Are you still willing to learn?”

"Eh. If they're weak, they're weak."

Figures. Luffy was a right pragmatic little bastard at heart. A pirate in truth. 

Rayleigh smiled, satisfied. “Then let’s continue, or your two years’ll be gone in an eyeblink, and you’re hardly competent enough to survive the New World yet.”

That wasn’t quite true. Technically, the Straw Hats could have gone on from Sabaody and been just fine, if their captain was the type of person willing to bend knee to an Emperor. 

Their captain was not the type of person willing to bend knee to an Emperor, or for that matter to the government, or to expectations, or to the world. Roger had been like that too, but he’d always taken more pride in the dazzle of it than Luffy did. Luffy just didn’t care.

And Rayleigh was too good at considering an action’s consequences, to act like either of them. Dark King, they’d named him. The Conqueror content to hide in another King’s shadow. 

Conqueror’s haki had this way of demanding attention. Even if they weren’t consciously projecting their presence, a Conqueror was liable to become the focal point of a crowd, to call gaze and thought towards them. Roger, who more than anything had loved a spectacle, had always delighted in it, in taking up more space than his nine feet of height ought to have allowed. He’d always loved to walk into a room casual-as-you-please and have everyone turn to him, and he’d loved mobs as much as he’d loved cheering crowds. Buggy had never been wrong to call Roger flashy.

And Rayleigh had loved that about Roger, same as he’d loved everything else about his captain, but conversely he had always hated that aspect of his haki. It was just so _inconvenient._ Stealth missions were shot from the outset. He could hardly be his captain’s shadow when his haki demanded people notice him. And Roger didn’t even see the problem, which left Rayleigh on his own to work out a solution because Roger would never bother to solve something he had no issues with. 

Eventually — though it took a lot of work — Rayleigh did learn to mute the effect, and good thing, too, because all getting noticed was useful for in his old age was getting himself sold as a slave to a wealthier buyer. (Getting caught by the Marines was not on his priority list, unless those Marines were named Garp and they’d come to get drunk at Shakky’s on the anniversary of Roger’s execution. And for that he didn’t need haki, he just needed ears to hear the door getting punched in.) But, like Roger, he didn’t think Luffy would particularly care to learn the trick of it.

And besides, the basics came first.

"Alright," said Rayleigh, "we'll play a game. I'll hide. Find me with observation and attack me with conqueror's. If you can make me stumble, you win and we eat lunch."

Luffy bounced to standing, shook the dirt off himself, tested a small burst of Will, and grinned. “Bring it on!”

And they were off.

 _O, my captain's heir,_ thought Rayleigh, as he darted through Rusukaina’s autumn-stained trees and listened to Luffy trip over a sleeping lion half a mile away, _you with your Will and your dreams: may you be well._

**Author's Note:**

> i bet you could use conqueror’s haki as a mosquito net. just project your will a little at all times and the mosquitos will drop unconscious before they can bite you


End file.
